06 June 2017

Return of the Maybot

The Supreme Leader had never been more clear about anything. The country was talking about one thing and one thing only. Brexit. So she had come to the same library in the Royal United Services Institute in Whitehall where she had launched her leadership campaign almost a year earlier, to talk about Brexit. That’s what the public was demanding and that’s what the public would get.

There were a few puzzled faces in the audience. They were under the impression that what most people had been talking about over the past couple of days was Saturday night’s terrorist attack in London and they had reasonably assumed that the Supreme Leader might have something to say about it. Apparently not. “More than ever, the country needs strong and stable leadership,” she said. And that was why she was calling on everyone to strengthen her hand so her leadership could be even stronger and more stable. The Maybot was back up and running.

Mistaking the groans of resignation and despair in the room for confirmation that her message of reassurance was getting through, the Supreme Leader went on to deliver much the same non-speech she had repeatedly given over the previous seven weeks. The same sentences that never quite made sense even on their own. Let alone when they were connected to all the others.

She alone had a Brexit plan. A plan she couldn’t fully disclose, other than to say no deal was better than a bad deal. Jeremy Corbyn didn’t have a plan because his plan was different to hers. “We will show leadership, because that is what leaders do,” the Maybot concluded, her algorithms no longer fully operational. “There is no time for learning on the job.” This was the closest she came to saying anything heartfelt. She’d been trying and failing to learn on the job for 12 months.